Category Archives: Pinhead Gunpowder

You know you wanted to be there…. and now you can see it… via 924Gilman and KillThatCat.com.

UPDATE: I just really had the chance to watch this and realized that the last two songs are missing. The recording does not include: “Losers of the Year” and “Mahogany.” But that’s ok, it’s fabulous nonetheless.

Future 8-Year Old Punk (in gray hood) Listening to 21 Guns by Green Day on a NYC Bus

I was talking with a fellow Green Day fan the other day about the countless nonsensical arguments people have over whether Green Day is “punk,” is “punk enough,” is “power punk,” is “pop punk,” or just “punk sellouts.” It boggles my mind, these conversations spread over the Internet and in person, the constant arguments people have over what defines punk and who is eligible to be called punk or even listen to it or attend shows, apparently. I continued by saying that I just don’t understand why people diss Green Day so much in regards to their “punkdom.” While I intellectually understand the arguments, I said, “these guys are punk to their soul, and because of them and their stardom, many fans of Green Day, if they so choose, are exposed to the world of punk. They are like a gateway drug to the history of punk, and even if people don’t enjoy their music, punks especially should be proud that they keep punk alive for new generations to be exposed to.” She liked the phrase, “gateway drug to the history of punk.”

Proof in point that GD is a gateway drug is Billie Joe Armstrong’s induction speech of Iggy Pop and the Stooges at last week’s Hall of Fame induction. He never gives “good” speeches because it’s not really his thing and he gets really shy and nervous for the most part when he has to pull out a piece of paper and read it (see as an example the speech he gave in 2006 when Green Day received the “Spirit of Liberty” Award from People for the American Way), but one of the great highlights of the speech is that you could tell how much he loved and how damned happy and excited he was to be inducting Iggy and the Stooges into the Hall of Fame. He then rattled off a list of about 70 bands that considered Iggy and the Stooges their inspiration. Eldon from the Green Day Community was kind enough to compile a list of the bands that he mentioned.

And then the censor at the end makes it hard for me to tell if he said another band, but who knows, that’s at least 99% of it hahah!
ENJOY! If you don’t know ‘em…CHECK ‘EM OUT

I’m pretty sure that the last band he mentioned that the censors bleeped was “and my own fucking band, Green Day, too!” Eldoon is right, check out this list of bands if you don’t know them because whether you call yourself a punk or not, the bands that he mentioned are great and powerful and each band will cause you to learn more about this music that exploded out of rebellion and rage and in its way, took over a little part of the world.

I recently wrote about the Pinhead Gunpowder show that I traveled to see out in Berkeley in February. I had the time of my life, was happy to support a woman suffering from cancer, see my friends, head to 924 Gilman for the first time, and see PHGP because I love the music, and yes, I happen to really like members of the band, particularly some guy named Billie Joe Armstrong. Some punk out in the East Bay decided to write a comment on the blog, calling the group of people I was with, “a bunch of losers.” Why were we losers? In his mind, we were only there to see Billie Joe and we wouldn’t like this band for any other reason than that. Fair enough, I suppose, even though he assumed a lot about me from one post without reading anything else I’ve written about Green Day or my life on this blog.

I was having dinner with friends when I read his comment, and I could easily have not approved it, but in this case, I was interested in his reasons (like I didn’t know what he was going to say in the first place) and wrote back then and there. I should have waited until I got home to reply, but I have tried my best to balance my fangirldom with real life commentary and was pissed and interested in knowing why he wrote that we were “losers.” He replied and implied that we were a bunch of losers because we were women traveling to see PHGP because of Billie Joe, and apparently, that is a not a good enough reason to see a band. Really, if that were the case, no one would see any band because of any member of it. He then went on to call me a bitch and a “women child,” telling me to “grow up” while complaining about my writing and misspelling “merrit” at the same time. Oh, and apparently punks don’t call themselves punks anymore.

There goes at least one idea of Gilman’s wall of ‘dont’s’ posted at the front door, “No Sexism.”

924 Gilman Rules of the Road

To be fair, maybe he was pissed that I mentioned that Aaron wasn’t very nice that night and seemed to have issues with the women in the audience, too. I know I had my issues when a fan screamed as Billie Joe walked into Gilman myself. What I wrote was meant to express how happy and determined I was to be a part of a special night at a special place with my friends that I had only recently heard about that made me feel part of a community and history that felt like home. I am a Green Day fan for sure, but this guy assumed (and I assume it was a guy myself) so many things based on the title of this blog and lines within the piece, that it made my head spin.

Billie Joe was recently featured in the gay-themed magazine, “Out.” It’s a great article and features a blog-only addition that can be found here. In the blog-only article, Billie Joe talks about what it means to be “punk rock.” He mostly focuses on the fact that the music brings together a community of somewhat like-minded people. Personally, I don’t care if you argue about the meanings of punk until you turn blue and drop dead. All I know is that I don’t know but one thing: it’s the music, stupid, that forms the community. It’s high time that punks stop arguing over every little thing and remember the sense of community, whether you are a punk, whether you don’t call yourself a punk anymore or whether you’re a bitch woman child. And for those young and old fans of Green Day that weren’t exposed to punk properly back in the day (or half-exposed to it like me), enjoy the gateway drug and the history and future as well.

ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “PUNK ROCK”:
That’s like a 10 part answer. I think of it as something that you need to have of your own. For me it’s about community. I think it’s kind of spiritual in its own way, because people fight over it so much and the meaning of it. It’s a sense of self-discovery. But also a new set of ideas and a new poetry, a new music that you discover that you notice that no one else is really into, or goes against what other people are normally into. It’s like you’re free to be an individual and taking on new ideas and challenging old ideas. I think it has a lot to do with burning down the establishment to create something new. But at the same time, you find relationships within that too. It’s something that’s supposed to empower you. It’s about starting something new. Part of the problem with a lot of punk rock is that people believe that it’s supposed to be one thing. Everything for me starts off with punk rock when I’m writing songs — it’s almost like I’m stripped down to the bare bones of music again. It’s kind of in my DNA in this point.-Billie Joe Armstrong, OUT Magazine, Popnography Blog

I started writing this right after the Pinhead Gunpowder show happened on February 12, but a few things got in the way, including the death of my Uncle while I was still in California. So, I know it’s been a while, but enjoy nonetheless.

A Show? There’s Going to Be a Show?

I had heard that there was going to be a super-secret benefit show by Pinhead Gunpowder at Gilman and I became obsessed (or as I like to say, focused) on the possibility of seeing a Green Day-related side project band in a small and intimate, show. My friend who introduced me to Billie Joe at Fake New Year’s in Los Angeles back in November keeps telling me that I heard it directly from Billie Joe himself that night because Billie Joe told him about it and I was standing there when he said it, but hell if I remember that happening. That night, all in all, is a bit of a blur.

After going to London in October to see Green Day at the O2 and then missing the Foxboro Hot Tubs by a bloody week, I became determined to head to my now favorite place on Earth, the East Bay, to see the band. PHGP is a band that I was only slightly aware of (shoot me) seven months ago and I wanted to see my friends in the Bay. As an extra bonus, the Mystic Knights of the Cobra (MKOTC) were playing at the Uptown at some point during the weekend, too. (I’ll be writing about that show in the next week.)

The rumor machine had PHGP playing on Saturday, February 13, 2010 at first, and MKOTC were rumored to open for them. However, it became evident that MKOTC weren’t going to open as they had been… Uh… banned from Gilman from the last time they played there. Then MKOTC booked a show at the Uptown for Saturday and were certainly not playing with PHGP and everyone’s attention somehow obsessed (focused) on the rumor that the benefit for Anandi Wonder, a friend of PHGP’s who was suffering from breast cancer, would happen on Friday, February 12, 2010, instead.

There had been some hard and fast talk saying that if news of the show came out too early and too furious, that the show would be canceled. I’m paranoid and pretty good at keeping a secret, but after a bit of sidestepping around the subject, a group of, shall we say… well-researched folks… from the Green Day Community somehow found themselves planning a weekend in the Bay.

I asked a friend to help me out (again) with a cheap buddy ticket on Continental, asked my friends in the Bay if I could stay with them, rented a car and prayed that nothing like a blizzard or anything would stop me from going. I had no cash, really, for any of this, and the cheap Continental ticket was a godsend that eventually turned into a nightmare.

Pinhead Gunpowder Crowd

And while everyone was busy keeping their mouths shut, Billie Joe himself, who is not known for keeping some things quiet, spilled the beans the night before the show on Twitter…

… and greenday.com was geeky enough to actually twit about his Tweet. It always cracks me up when they do this.

Snowpacalypse 2010

There was one giant glitch in my crazy plans: Northeast winters and their ability to make things go a bit haywire. The week before the February 12th show, a storm caused major disruptions in transportation and life in the Maryland and DC areas and I literally thanked my lucky stars that it hadn’t reached NYC. Of course, I still had a week to leave the city so anything could happen, and yes, it did.

On Wednesday, February 10th, two days before the show, with people heading to the Bay from the East Coast on Thursday and Friday, a proclaimed “Snowpacalyse” poised itself to hit the East Coast again and this time, NYC was destined to be in the eye of a twenty-four hour storm. Just. Fucking. Peachy.

A few folks including me were slated to fly standby. Standby works only if the airline does not sell out seats and they end up distributing tickets to friends and workers for a nominal fee at the gate. And I mean, nominal. If a storm disrupted service for a few hours, we still had good chances of getting the cheap seats. Any longer than that, and we were screwed. Wednesday’s 24-hour storm busted the best of good intentions for people WITH tickets, let along dweebs like me catching a good deal.

Larry Livermore posted on his Facebook a declaration that the storm had better be a doozy, because he had just given up his spot on his flight after being told that he couldn’t get booked on any other flights. Read more on his story, which sums up a lot of my own feelings about the Snowpocalypse here.

Anyway, long story short, by the time my flight was suppose to leave the East Coast on Thursday, we had such a blanket of storm that my satellite teevee went out on Wednesday, which hardly ever happens. I had already changed my original Thursday flight to Friday in anticipation of the airline industry shutting down on Wednesday (announced on Tuesday), and I went into work on my vacation-day Thursday, hoping in vain that I would actually get on a Friday standby flight. I was, to say the least, freaking out.

Another person who lives down in Virginia was slated to leave on Thursday, but her flight out of Dulles was canceled, and another friend helped her rebook her ticket by way of multiple destinations. I could feel the entire weekend that I had looked forward to for so long becoming something that would not happen if I didn’t take action. So I did.